There’s an excellent
piece in the Wall Street Journal by Steven Malanga about our “investments” in education and public safety (more on that in a minute). The fact is that this administration and many Democrats will have you believe that our education system is in desperate need of money that is being denied to them by the evil Republicans. But the truth is that per pupil spending on education is still increasing, despite our economic hardships. At a time when private sector businesses are having to make cuts and do more with less, education spending is still increasing.
Also, despite what the Democrats may claim, we actually have more teachers in the classrooms than ever before. The number of teachers has increased at a faster pace compared to student enrollment. From 1971 to 1984, the number of students in government school actually declined by 15%, while the number of teachers increased by 7%. In 1955, the number of students per teacher was at 26.9. By 2010, that figure has been lowered to 15.6 students per teacher. Now why would that be? Let me offer one explanation:
If you take taxpayer dollars and put those dollars toward hiring more teachers – you create more teacher’s union members. When teacher’s unions have more members they get more dues dollars. When teacher’s unions have more money they have more to donate in political campaigns. When teacher’s unions have more money to donate in political campaigns they donate that money to Democrats. So – when Democrats increase spending on teachers they are actually taking a roundabout way of taking taxpayer funds and pouring them into Democrat campaign coffers.
But it wasn’t just teachers that saw an increase in hiring. Government schools decided that they needed a whole host of other bureaucrats on their government payrolls – administrators, counselors, instructional aides, etc. Teachers used to make up about 65% of educational workers. Now teachers make up less than half (40%) of government school workers.
So we have more teachers in the class rooms with less students enrolled, we have more administrators than ever before, and what has been the result? Average SAT scores are DOWN 7% since 1966 and there has been zero gain in reading scores.
